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Timing

A heads-up before the reminder that matters

A reminder that fires at the moment something starts has told you about a thing you can no longer prepare for. The interview is at 14:00. Knowing at 14:00 is knowing too late. A pre-alarm reminder exists to close that gap.

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The gap between knowing and being ready

Almost nothing you commit to takes zero time to start. A call needs the notes open. A school run needs shoes, a bag and a car. A medication dose needs a glass of water and a hand free. A flight needs an hour of dread and a taxi.

A reminder set for the moment itself ignores all of that. It is accurate and useless at the same time, because it arrives after the window in which you could have done anything about it. The result is the familiar half-minute of panic followed by arriving late anyway.

A pre-alarm is a second, earlier ring attached to the same reminder. You are not creating a separate reminder and keeping the two in step by hand. You are saying: tell me about this thing now, and again when it actually starts.

Reminders that arrive exactly on time, and exactly too late

Each of these was set correctly. The time was right. The lead time was missing.

  • The call you had not read for

    The reminder lands as the call connects. You spend the first four minutes of it opening the document you meant to read, in front of the person who sent it.

  • The appointment across town

    Knowing at 15:00 about a 15:00 appointment forty minutes away is not a reminder. It is a notification that you have already missed something.

  • The thing that needs an hour of defrosting

    Dinner at 19:00 needed a decision at 17:00. The 19:00 reminder is correct and completely unhelpful, and everyone in the house finds out at the same moment.

  • The deadline that needed a day

    A form due Friday needed a signature, a scan and someone else's reply. A Friday morning reminder tells you about a problem you can no longer solve by Friday.

Setting a pre-alarm

It is one control on the reminder you were already creating, not a second reminder to maintain.

  1. Set the reminder for the real moment

    Keep the reminder honest: the time the thing actually happens. Do not fudge it fifteen minutes early, because then you stop trusting the time in your own list.

  2. Add the lead time

    Choose 5, 10, 15, 20, 30 or 40 minutes, or 1 or 5 hours ahead. Pick the amount of time the preparation genuinely takes, not the amount that sounds reasonable.

  3. Stack another if it needs two

    You can put more than one pre-alarm on a reminder. Five hours out to arrange the thing, thirty minutes out to move towards it. They ring separately.

  4. Choose how each one reaches you

    The pre-alarm is its own ring, so a quiet heads-up can precede a much louder reminder on the same item.

Two rings, one reminder

The pre-alarm does not replace the reminder. Both fire. That sounds obvious and it is the part people get wrong when they try to build this by hand out of two separate reminders: one of them gets edited, the other does not, and within a fortnight they disagree about when the thing is.

Because both rings belong to the same reminder, moving the reminder moves the warning with it. Marking the reminder done stops both. Deleting it deletes both. There is one object in your list, not two.

It also works on anything that repeats, which is where it earns the most. A weekly meeting you keep arriving at unprepared becomes a weekly meeting with a standing thirty-minute warning, set once.

  • Eight preset offsets, from 5 minutes out to 5 hours
  • Stack several on one reminder for a sequence of warnings
  • Moves, completes and deletes with the reminder it belongs to
  • Works on repeating reminders, so the warning repeats too
A notebook and laptop on a desk before a meeting

Lead times that are usually about right

  • 5 to 10 minutes for anything you are already sitting in front of — a call, a handover, a class you are in the building for
  • 15 to 20 minutes for a journey on foot, or for finding and reading a document first
  • 30 to 40 minutes for a school pick-up, a train, or a meeting you need to prepare for properly
  • 1 hour for anything that involves other people being ready as well
  • 5 hours for a thing that needs buying, booking, defrosting, printing or signing before it can happen

A pre-alarm is not the same as a nag

A pre-alarm fires before the reminder, once per offset, and then the reminder itself fires at the real time. A nag fires after, re-ringing on an interval until you mark the thing done. They solve opposite halves of the same problem, and a reminder can carry both: a warning beforehand so you can prepare, and a nag afterwards so you cannot quietly drop it.

Being told at the deadline is not a reminder. It is a report.

Set the reminder for when the thing happens, and the pre-alarm for when you would need to start moving.

Add a lead time to the next thing you cannot arrive at cold

Take the one meeting or appointment you consistently reach unprepared, and give it a thirty-minute warning. It is a single control on a reminder you were setting anyway.

Start with GoogleSee how nag reminders work

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